BLOG

Published 26 June 2015

Young Scientist Thoughts: Taking a Bite out of a Chocolate Bar

 So here I am. The 65th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting is less than two weeks away and I am in New York City, finishing to write about my expectations for the upcoming meeting.

Throughout the last years, I have applied several times in order to attend the meetings. The reason I applied and reapplied were quite simple to me: As a soon-to-be physician and as a research scholar, I thought to myself: “Here is a conference with Nobel laureates! This will be extremely interesting”. Usually, I attend brain tumor conferences since I want to specialize in neurosurgery and brain tumors are the language of the field. Consequently, this conference dealing with science is sure to be a thriller!

And even though I have yet to attend, a short review of the people going, (via the mediatheque) proved to be a super interesting read. One researcher is tackling astroparticle physics, while another is looking at mechanisms of infections involving T-cells. I was thinking to myself just how many wonderful collaborations, conversations and ideas will develop from each conversation of two people or a group!

And then the chocolate bar came.

Photo: Lee McCoy (CC BY-ND 2.0)
Photo: Lee McCoy (CC BY-ND 2.0)

The one thing I was not expecting, however, from this conference was a lecture with a Nobel laureate and a representative from a chocolate bar company. You are probably thinking to yourself “a chocolate bar company? What is that all about?” That is the same thing I said to myself! See, when I applied for participating in this year’s meeting, I knew I was going to meet interesting people and connect with researchers from various backgrounds. To me, it was crystal clear that I could try to analyze and tackle how to fight a brain tumor from a computer programmer’s perspective. I mean, here is a conference with so many other people, from so many fields in academia, I am sure that ideas such as trying to search for the solution of brain cancer by programming a video game might be refreshing!

A couple of weeks ago, I received an email about an event, “Feeding the 9.6 Billion“. This event will be the Mars (correct, the candy company) “Science Breakfast”, which is cool to say the least.

But wait a second. We will be talking about a potential solution for feeding people worldwide. It suddenly became clear to me that Lindau will probably be the perfect place to talk about such solutions. “’Say no more’ I thought to myself!” This is the place I need to be. That is where the people I want to talk to and the ideas worth sharing are. A place where friendships are formed.

There are several reasons why I love traveling. You get to meet so many people from all sorts of different cultures, backgrounds and experiences. While meeting them, you see that we are identical to each other and are of the same nature. However, when traveling one gets the “feel” of a certain country or region, whereas in Lindau one can truly expect a plethora of ideas, constantly flowing, ever so bright.

Here is to that chocolate bar meeting!

 

Uri P. Hadelsberg,

The Technion Institute

From The USA & Israel